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The 2nd APAC Blockchain Conference was held in Melbourne last week. According to the organisers, the previous event attracted about 150 people. This year, registrations were around three times as many. The Blockchain story is only just beginning, if the level of interest and the range of conference topics are anything to go by. Here are a few random observations from the two-day event.

A story is just what we got from Robert Kahn, speaking on the role he played in developing the TCP/IP protocol, and the evolution of “Digital Object Architecture” as a way to identify any type of data, regardless of the technology used to create, store or retrieve it.

Gingkoo CEO William Zuo and Novatti‘s Blockchain Head Peter Christo introduced their collaboration on a Blockchain-based cross-border payment platform. There was a presentation on Hcash by Andrew Wasleyewicz, which talked about the “7 H’s” of their solution. While the quirkiest (and possibly most engaging/authentic presentation of Day 1) came from ConsenSys‘s Blockchain expert Lucas Cullen, who told us “7 Reasons Why Not To Use Blockchain Technology” (compulsory listening for any hapless corporate CTO under board pressure to come up with a DLT strategy…).

In between was Data 61‘s Zhu Liming who talked about some of the wider implications and opportunities for Blockchain in his capacity as Chair of the Australian Blockchain and DLT Standardisation Committee. There were also some insights from Gilbert & Tobin‘s COO Sam Nickless on how lawyers must embrace the new technology to avoid becoming disintermediated.

A diverting interlude from economist Lord Desai suggested that “Bitcoins are not coins, and cryptocurrencies are not currencies”. Many might agree, but we already know they are a new asset class in their own right, and need to be treated as such.

Standards (both technical and regulatory) were the topic of a panel discussion comprising mainly lawyers and regulators. The remaining panels on Day 1 (representing commerce and industry) addressed key themes of Blockchain scaling, interoperability, privacy, security and commercial deployment.

Day 2 began with an interesting keynote from former ASIC Chair, Greg Medcraft, now at the OECD. Mr Medcraft is no stranger to the debate on cryptocurrencies and ICOs, but chose to focus his remarks on the benefits, risks and opportunities for Blockchain. On the plus side, Blockchain can reduce the number of intermediaries in a transaction, it provides traceability and transparency, it increases the speed of payments (and reduces the cost), it offers data security, and it provides greater access to markets (e.g., SME supply chains). He foresees fiat and asset-backed digital currencies, and government support for Blockchain solutions in areas such as identity, provenance, supply chain and AML. Plus, for consumers, there should be greater trust and security, better financial access and inclusion, lower costs and better products. Key risks remain, however, in data privacy, security (ID, authentication, cyber-attacks), and consumer and investor protection. Policy makers need to be pro-active and forward-looking, keep up to date on these rapid developments, and co-ordinate across industry, sectors and globally. Citing some of the issues associated with ICOs, Mr Medcraft then urged regulators to exchange information with their counterparts and identify best practice, avoid regulatory arbitrage, create greater legal certainty, and raise awareness of the risks and rewards.

Victor Wang from the China Wanxiang Group followed up with a presentation that re-cast Blockchain as a new economic model, drawing on his reading of “Das Kapital”, and introduced the concept of GBP (“Gross Blockchain Product”). According to this theory, Blockchain is a means to redistribute and reallocate resources and assets; it is transforming the cost of transactions and value exchange; it is creating new assets; and it is building new products and services, as well as the delivery mechanism itself.

We heard from Zuotian Luan of Fortuna Blockchain on the future of OTC derivatives, and how decentralized exchanges are addressing legacy problems of counter-party and credit risk, operational efficiency, and lack of liquidity. He sees a “decentralized margin system” as a long-term solution that will reduce the costs of posting and managing collateral on traditional OTC exchanges.

There was an interesting discussion on the future of capital markets themselves, reflecting the perspective of traditional exchanges, clearing houses and custody providers, plus tZero. (As an aside, I was pleasantly surprised to see so many representatives of the “back office” at the conference, including trust banks and share registries. However, there didn’t appear to be anyone from the brokerage or advisory side, and no-one from the ASX, even though their Blockchain project to replace/enhance CHESS has been widely lauded as being in the vanguard of this new technology.)

Finally, a quick plug for my colleague, Fran Strajnar, CEO and co-founder of Brave New Coin who moderated a panel on ICOs. I think he summarized the tone of the discussion really well, when he said this is probably the only financial services sector that is asking for regulation. “Tell us the rules and let us get on with the job.”

The recent week-long Intersekt fintech festival kicked off with a 48-hour hackathon, sponsored by NAB, hosted by Stone & Chalk and York Butter Factory, and designed to meet the needs of NAB’s SME customers.

1. How to make the lives of SME owners easier
2. How to help SMEs generate more business

12 teams competed over the weekend, and each presented their ideas to a panel of industry experts. Clearly, these were not the usual startup pitches (and none have a public website), but it was interesting to see the results. Projects are listed here in the order they presented:

NABTax – “tax audit insurance”
Designed to encourage better/best practice tax governance among SMEs, it uses a combination of a tax risk rating linked to a reduced cost of premiums for tax audit insurance.
The solution would help SMEs to be better prepared for an ATO request for information, aid understanding of the ATO’s current small business benchmarks, and provide insights on the ATO’s data matching protocols.
Essentially it would generate a risk rating based on quantitative and qualitative analysis of supporting documents supplied by the SME.

EasyPay – “reconciling invoices and receipts”
Deploying an e-invoicing model, the platform would generate a unique reference number, linked to an ABN, and generate a QR code to be scanned by the payer.
At its heart, it would better match invoices and payments. The service would be sold under a freemium model, and would be compliant with the New Payment Platform (NPP).
The main challenge would be in reaching and gaining traction with consumers (the bill payers).

ORDR – “managing cash-flow, inventory ordering and sales”
Drawing on a dashboard showing SKUs of items in stock, it would use machine learning
to predict stock ordering requirements. Although this concept was based on actual SME experience, the panel felt that there would be integration issues with existing POS and supply chain systems. Also, how would it link to CRM data, and how would it be able to both accommodate new season stock, and accurately forecast demand?
Finally, what level of SKU data is actually available from NAB transaction data?

Just-In-Time MBA – “a financial/business coaching app for SME owners”
According to data presented by the team, 60% of SMEs fail within their first three years. And given there are something like two million micro-businesses in Australia, and 250,000 new ones established each year, if nothing else, there is a huge opportunity to reduce this failure rate.
Using the available APIs (plus data from the SMEs’ accounting systems), the platform would analyze payments data and issue alerts designed to prompt remedial action.
Based on the presentation, it seemed that the proposed analysis is only capturing cash-flow – clearly, the real value and insights would come from holistic health checks.

NAB SME Connect – “connecting small business to customers”
Using a number of data inputs, this service would push deals in real-time to your smart phone. The customer app shows only relevant offers – based on preferences, proximity, etc. The client SMEs can see the level of interest and demand, to generate “Smart Deals” based on transaction data. The panel wondered about the opt-in model, and also felt there were already similar competitor products, or that any competitive advantage would be difficult to defend.

Wait< – “wait less for elective surgery”
Aimed at time-poor SME owners, the team wanted us to think of this as an “eBay plus Afterpay for elective surgery”. Taking the approach of a two-sided marketplace, it would
support transactional loans to cover the cost of surgery, and match customers (patients) to suppliers (health care providers). Drawing on NAB’s current healthcare payment services, the solution would combine NAB’s transaction banking and health APIs, plus Medicare APIs (for patient and practitioner verification), to generate a pre-populated lending form. No doubt designed to appeal to NAB Health, this was a very niche project.

Tap & Go – “turning customer loyalty into rewards more easily and more cheaply”
This idea would enable SMEs to use transaction data to decide who gets a discount, and how much. Built on a merchant administration platform, it would capture transaction data from POS systems. It would be offered as a subscription service for merchants. The panel wondered how this solution compared to the competition, such as Rewardle.

TAP – “smarter marketing solutions”
Commenting that only 16% of SMEs are maximizing their online presence, this service is designed to increase merchants’ digital presence. It would use NAB APIs to manage and track campaigns – by comparing the data to past sales periods and previous campaigns. Campaigns would also be linked to social media accounts. The panel questioned how the solution would fare against competitors such as Hootsuite.

StopOne – “integrated hub for making data driven decisions and connect with a NAB banker”
Conceptually, this was a very ambitious project, designed to let SMEs use dashboards and forecasting from NAB transaction data (and other sources), to drill down into visualized data records. It would also integrate with social media insights, incorporate a messaging platform to allow SMEs to communicate with their bankers, and enable SMEs to share their dashboard with a business banker. The panel queried the cost of the data analytics for the SME, which presumably comes on top of their existing accounting software.
They also suggested the team take a look at what 9 Spokes is already doing in this space.

Spike – “accounts payable solution”
Currently, paying invoices can involve a 10 step process. The average SME has 90 suppliers. Accessed via a NAB accounts payable login, the solution incorporates the Google vision API to capture an image of the invoice and extract key data points. The SME then chooses the date and account for payment, the invoice is stored in the cloud, from where is posted to the Xero ledger, and the NAB payments portal. In addition, the client can share purchase order data with their supplier to pre-populate the invoice. It could
also optimize expenses, by recommending offers or product switches. When asked about the commercial model, the team suggested it could be offered free by NAB, who get access to extra data.

nablets – “focus on things that matter”
According to this team, 90% of SMEs are not taking full advantage of digital tools. Using NAB APIs and event-based triggers, clients would use their NAB Business Connect account login to create “if this then that” rules and tasks. It would also leverage open banking data APIs. The panel asked about the logic and the parameters to be embedded in the rules-based activities, as well as the proposed categories and range of functions to be automated. They also wondered how it would actually help SMEs to adopt digital tools – some of which are already integrated into the current banking portal.

NAB Hub – “Small Business Hub”
Designed to present banking data the way customer wants to see it (P&L, balance sheet, net asset position etc.), it would also help in generating leads for pre-approved loan products, and help with investments via optimized rates, and for insurance cover it would
assist with policy reviews, claims and risk analysis. The panel asked if this was intended to be a NAB add-on or a standalone product. They also suggested the team look at what Tyro is doing around lending analysis – but recognized that there was possibly a place for this type of tailored advice.

Based on the judging, the winners and runners-up were:

1. Just-in-time MBA 2. Spike 3. NABTax

Meanwhile, the crowd favourite was Just-in-time MBA, and the best innovative idea was TAP.

If I had to summarise the presentations, it would be as follows:

1. Most of the presentations were still talking about yesterday’s/today’s banking products, rather than products of the future
2. There was very little evidence of projects designed to help SMEs grow their business
3. Any effort to gain traction for these projects will revolve around changing customer (and bank) behaviours….

The latest event organized by DIG ID (the Melbourne Digital Identity Meetup) featured a Q&A with Steve Shapiro, CTO of Token, moderated by Alan Tsen, General Manager of Stone & Chalk Melbourne. Given the current level of interest in solutions to address online fraud, ID theft, data protection, privacy and personal security, the discussion covered a lot of conceptual and technical topics in a short space of time, so here are some of the key points.

First off, Steve spoke about his start-up and tech journey, that took him from IM (Digsby, Tagged, Bloomberg IB), to cryptocurrency and digital wallets (Case), to digital ID with the Token ring. The pivot towards an ID solution came about after working on Case, where he realized that most consumers don’t understand private key management and the issue of permanence (as compared to the internet, where password re-sets are relatively easy, and often regularly enforced upon users).

If the goal is to provide fool-proof but highly secure end-user authentication, the solution has to focus on the “signing device”, by making it much easier than the status quo. Hence the combination of two-factor authentication (2FA) and bio-metrics to enable Token ring users to live key-less, card-less and cashless, and without having to constantly remember and update passwords. In short, the Token ring works with anything contactless, as long as the relevant permission/authentication protocol layer (challenge and response process) is compatible with the ring’s circuitry.

In assessing the downside risk, gaining consumer adoption is critical, to ensure that users see the benefits of the convenience combined with the credentialing power. Equally, success will depend on the ability to scale as a hardware manufacturer, and the potential to drive traction through virality.

There is still a lot of design work to do on the hardware itself (to enable assembly, customization and distribution as locally as possible). And the platform needs to bring on more partner protocols, especially in key verticals. At the end of the day, this is still a Blockchain solution, with a UX layer for the cryptographic component.

When asked about the future of ID, Steve felt that in the medium term, consumers will no longer have to carry around multiple cards or have to remember multiple passwords. Longer term, governments will no longer be the central authority on managing ID: unlike today, a driver’s license will no longer be the gold standard – instead, solutions will be based on decentralized, contextualized and user-defined ID.

This led to a discussion about Sovereign ID, e-government and digital citizenship (e.g., Dubai and Estonia) – and the break up of big government in favour of more city-states. (Which could result either in a “small is beautiful” approach to self-governing and sustainable communities, or a dystopian nightmare of human geo-blocking, as in a film like “Code 46”).

For the tech buffs, the Token ring’s IC hosts a total of 84 components, including the main secure element (as with mobile phones and other devices), finger print reader, optical scan, Bluetooth, NFC, accelerometer, MCU, Custom inductive charging etc.

Finally, there was a discussion about the risk of cloning, mimicking or breaching the unique and secure ID attributes embedded in each Token ring. While it is possible for users to encrypt other knowledge components as part of their individual access verification and authentication (e.g., hand gestures), there is still a need to rely upon trusted manufacturers not to corrupt or compromise the secure layer. And while the public keys to core protocols (such as credit cards and swipe cards) are maintained by the protocol owners themselves and not stored on the device or on Token’s servers, it will be possible for other third parties to on-board their own protocols via a SDK.

Just over two years ago, I posted a blog on how the tourism and travel industries needed to embrace the opportunities brought about by digital disruption. Having been on half a dozen overseas trips in the past 12 months, I can see that there have been some improvements in the traveler experience, but there is still a lot of room for improvement…

One of the biggest benefits has been the expanded integration of public transportation information into Google Maps. Navigation and route planning, right down to which platform to board from or which subway exit to take, has been a huge boost to the traveler UX. Many cities are now using integrated stored value cards for public transport, but limitations still exist: for example, some systems don’t make it that easy for overseas visitors to obtain the card itself, others make it hard to re-load other than by cash; while only a few systems, like Hong Kong and Japan, support multiple point-of-sale transactions for shops, restaurants and other services.

Another plus for frequent travelers has been the increased adoption of chip-enabled, e-passports which streamline the immigration entry/exit process (but only for participating countries, of course). Laborious paperwork still exists in many cases with arrival/departure cards and customs declaration forms – but over time, these processes should become more streamlined with the adoption of digital IDs and biometrics.

Using local mobile phone networks may have gotten easier with compatible operating systems, but even with pre-paid travel SIM cards and data packages, access costs are still disproportionately expensive for overseas visitors. Sure, there are more and more public WiFi services and hotspots available, but most still require users to provide personal data and/or reveal security weaknesses. Even though I recently purchased a mobile pass to access “free” WiFi services abroad, it’s hard to see what value it offers, because it only works after I have already logged onto the WiFi network.

Getting flight information, notifications and alerts via SMS and e-mail has improved considerably, along with easier online booking tools and mobile check-in solutions – and of course, QR codes now support paperless boarding cards. But I’ve noticed that some airline apps don’t support full integration with mobile phone wallets, and consolidating ticketing and invoicing information (e.g., for consolidated expense reporting) from multiple airlines and booking platforms still feels a long way off.

Finally, a constant irritation for travelers are the card transaction fees that most hotels still pass on at checkout – as if many guests are likely to pay in cash! – compounded by the FX fees that the credit card companies also like to charge. All up, this can mean an average of between 3% and 5% in additional fees, in a situation where hotel guests are something of a captive audience. Transaction fees remain a target for further disruption….